Clinton faces Vietnam War legacy in Laos

US secretary of state makes historic visit to Laos and speaks of need to find new ways to 'partner for the future'.

Cluster munitions and unexploded ordnance planted during the Vietnam War kill an estimated 100 people a year [Reuters]

Hillary Clinton has confronted a painful legacy of the Vietnam War when she met a man who lost his eyesight and both hands to a cluster bomb as she made the first visit to Laos by a US secretary of state in nearly six decades.

Clinton's roughly four-hour stop in the one-party communist state on Wednesday was the first by a US secretary ofstate since John Foster Dulles visited Vientiane in 1955.

The United States dropped more bombs on the Southeast Asian nation than it did on Germany and Japan combined in World War Two in a futile effort to destroy North Vietnamese supply lines to the South along the Ho Chi Minh trail.

More than three decades after the Vietnam War's end, the country is still struggling to rid itself of an estimated 80 million cluster munitions and other unexploded ordnance that kill and maim as many as 100 people a year.

'Tragic legacies'

"Here in Laos, the past is always with us," Clinton said after touring a centre that makes prosthetic devices for victims

Clinton's talks with the Laotian prime and foreign ministers constituted an attempt to improve relations with a country that has kept its distance from the United States but is now looking for better ties, in part as a counterweight to regional players China and Vietnam.

"When I met with the foreign minister, we traced the arc of our relationship from addressing the tragic legacies of the past to finding new ways to partner for the future," Clinton told US diplomats as she wrapped up her stay. During her short visit, she laid an offering of lotus flowers in the lap of a statue at a 16th century Buddhist temple.

And at the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise,which helps victims of unexploded ordnance, Clinton spent about 10 minutes chatting with Phongsavath Souliyalat, a young man who cradled a white cane between the two stumps of his arms as they spoke.

Souliyalat described how four years ago, on his 16th birthday, he was walking home from school with a friend who picked up a cluster bomblet and handed it to him. The bomb exploded, taking both his hands and leaving him blind.

"I would like to see all governments ban cluster bombs and (try) to clear the bombs together and to help the survivors," Souliyalat said. " I am lucky because I got help ... but so many survivors are without help. Their life is very very hard."